In the ongoing development of food products, various motivations exist to substitute certain food ingredients for other food ingredients. Cost can be a motivation, as can availability of an ingredient, health reasons, the ability to process a commercial product, and stability and flavor properties of a commercial product.
Cheese compositions are no exception. Various reasons exist, such as cost, for food product development to attempt to reduce levels of certain ingredients such as casein protein and replace at least a portion of the reduced amount of the casein protein with a protein or non-protein substitute ingredient. Casein protein is a protein, naturally found in milk, that can provide a cheese composition with desired functional, organoleptic, and nutritional properties. One reason to use a substitute ingredient for casein protein is the possibility of reducing total cost of a cheese composition.
But replacing a conventional cheese composition ingredient such as casein protein can present many expected or unexpected technical hurdles. Cheese compositions are complex compositions and their properties can be sensitive to the presence of certain ingredients, in functional amounts. Thus, conventional cheese manufacturing has come to rely on certain cheese composition ingredients to provide certain properties.
The ability to replace casein protein with a suitable substitute ingredient can be significantly limited and unpredictable. The replacement ingredient should produce a cheese composition having desired functional, organoleptic, and nutritional properties. For example, replacing casein with a non-casein ingredient can tend to result in a cheese composition that exhibits less than desired functional properties (e.g., melt, stretch, and firmness). Similarly, a replacement ingredient can potentially impart a different, sometimes less desirable, flavor, color, or texture to a cheese composition. Furthermore, a replacement ingredient has the potential of affecting nutritional characteristics of a cheese composition, e.g., the cheese composition may not satisfy nutritional standards imposed by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, or the Code of Federal Regulations. Conventional cheese making has come to rely on the mere presence and sometimes quantity of casein protein to provide certain cheese composition properties.
Another ingredient that is commonly found in cheese compositions is fat, which often contains an amount trans-fat. Recent consumer trends indicate that trans-fatty acids (i.e., “trans-fat”) in food products are desirably avoided, to increase healthfulness. Accordingly, many food product marketers are finding ways to provide consumers with food products having reduced or substantially no trans-fat content. Food manufacturers would like to provide consumers with food products (e.g., cheese compositions and food products that include cheese (e.g., snack food (e.g., frozen snack food) including pizza, pizza-type snack food, and the like)) having a low amount of trans-fat (e.g., about 5 weight percent or less of trans-fat based on the total weight of the fat). However, changing the formulation of a food composition to reduce trans-fat levels can present significant technical hurdles. Certain trans-fat-containing ingredients have been relied on to produce desired properties in food products and food product intermediates. Changing the trans-fat content of a food product can significantly impact properties such as processing properties, organoleptic properties, combinations of these, and the like, of the food product.
Cheese compositions are complex chemical compositions. Cheese composition properties such as melt, crumble, stretch, firmness, etc., could be undesirably affected by reduced trans-fat content. Accordingly, there is motivation to provide cheese compositions having a low amount of trans-fat, while at the same time substantially maintaining or even improving cheese composition properties such as melt, crumble, stretch, firmness, and the like. In addition, there is a strong need to provide food products that include such cheese compositions and methods of making such cheese compositions and food products.